Representatives from Palestinian factions Fatah and Hamas are in Cairo for reconciliation talks, the progress of which has been at best uneven. Resentment and sometimes open fighting has complicated efforts to bring the two groups together since a violent 2007 coup saw Hamas forces expel Fatah from the Gaza Strip. The fighting cost more than 100 lives and injured more than 500, and was marked by Hamas atrocities that included shooting out the kneecaps of Fatah officers and throwing them off buildings. Meanwhile reports are surfacing that Palestinian President and Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas has rejected efforts by Israel to bring Palestinian refugees from Syria into the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Numbers reaching into the hundreds of thousands of refugees are seeking to flee violence in the country, but Palestinian leaders fear that settling them into the West Bank or Gaza Strip would vitiate their claims to territory inside Israel’s 1949 armistice lines.

[Photo: Olivier Pacteau / Flickr]